Plugable USB 2.0 Universal Laptop Docking Station with DisplayLink DVI/VGA up to 1920x1080, Audio, Ethernet, and 4 Available High-Speed USB 2.0 Ports

by Plugable Technologies

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 4.3 x 3.4 x 6.3 inches ; 7.2 ounces
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• ASIN: B002PONXAI
• Item model number: UD-160-A
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (112 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank:
  • #9 in Electronics > Computers & Add-Ons > Computer Accessories > Laptop & Netbook Computer Accessories > Docking Stations
• Date first available at Amazon.com: September 22, 2009

Product Description

Get around the limitations of your laptop or notebook with a single, simple USB 2.0 connection to any DVI/VGA monitor, keyboard, mouse, speakers, and other USB 2.0 devices which can stay on your desk; Share this common set of devices among several users with a swap of the USB cable; use the flexibility of the virtual USB graphics card to extend your Windows desktop across both displays.

Performance

USB virtual graphics provides full performance for office applications and web browsing, but videos and 3D games should be played on the computer's main screen.

Drivers

Support for all of Windows XP 32-bit, Vista and Win7 32/64-bit with latest service packs. Windows Home Basic/Starter do not support multiple monitors. Not recommended for use with Mac (beta drivers only). GPL driver source on Linux and other platforms. Linux requires manual xorg.conf configuration - for advanced users only.

GPU Compatibility

On Windows Vista and Win7, virtual USB graphics makes use of your primary GPU, so is compatible only with systems with a single Intel, nVidia, ATI GPU running recent WDDM drivers.

In the box

Includes an AC adapter, so even power-hungry USB devices like hard disks can be connected. Note that the docking station does not power or charge your laptop itself. The dock is a multifunction compound USB 2.0 device, with a Terminus USB 2.0 Hub, DisplayLink DL-165 USB Graphics, C-Media CM6300 USB Audio (supporting the USB Audio Class 1.0 standard), ASIX AX88772A USB Ethernet Chip.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

89 of 92 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At last! Solution for adding extra monitors to my Win7 laptop, January 26, 2010

By 

Dmitry Risukhin - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plugable USB 2.0 Universal Laptop Docking Station with DisplayLink DVI/VGA up to 1920x1080, Audio, Ethernet, and 4 Available High-Speed USB 2.0 Ports (Electronics)

I have been looking for a way to connect multiple monitors to my laptop for a very long time (solutions that won't cost an arm or leg, like those Magma express-card extenders). I was so used to having 3 monitors plugged into my laptop's docking station in XP era, but with the arrival of Vista it stopped working. I used the Tritton USB2VGA device back then, but they have never managed to deliver reliable drivers for Vista or now Windows 7. So I was stuck with only two screens for a few years (as none of the laptop docking ports I know offers three monitor ports, at best you get two -- VGA and DVI).

At the CES 2010 I've met with the CEO of Plugable and got a comprehensive overview of their Universal Docking Station product -- which prompted me to buy TWO of them, one for office usage, and another one for home. And I could not be happier with it! The guy used to run the Microsoft USB team, which boosted my confidence that the hardware drivers would be well maintained, and my installation experienced has proved it.

Once you plug this product into your PC's USB port (or laptop docking station's port as in my case) Windows finds the new hardware and just starts downloading and installing the drivers from the Windows Update. It finds about 6 or 7 hardware components (this docking station provides you with 4 USB ports, DVI monitor -- with VGA tranciever -- LAN port and Speakers/Microphone ports). So it is not a trivial device, and I've never seen the drivers installation running so smoothly. Within a minute or two I was prompted to accept some license agreement, and then was able to configure the layout of my monitors through the windows screen resolution box (pointing out which one is left, center and right and setting the resolutions). I did reboot, just to make sure :)

My laptop is running Windows 7 64 bit, it's Toshiba 700m. It drives a monitor through this USB station at 1280x1024 32bit, plus two more monitors are plugged into the laptop's port replicator (via VGA and DVI). Unlike the previous Tritton USB2VGA product I had experience with, this one is actually quite fast. It has its own grapnics chip inside and I could not notice any significant CPU workload increase when dragging some "active" windows with refreshable content (like Internet browser with Silverlight or Flash animation) into its monitor. You would not want to play a video in a USB-connected monitor, but I have tried anyway and it did play the 720p I've thrown at it (though it looked more like 720i -- you could see the video lines were interlaced). However it works seemlessly for Office applications (Outlook, Word, Excel) and for keeping an Internet browser window there -- which are my usage scenarios. It did drop my Windows Performance Score from 3.5 to 3.1, but I am quite fine with it. It does support the Windows Aero (the window bars are semi-transparent and you can see through them).

I also have my audio speakers plugged into this docking station, and it emmits clear sound without any problems. The Toshiba port replicator LACKS audio ports, so every time when plugging my laptop into it I had to plug the 3.5 audio connector directly into the laptop -- which was very annoying. Not anymore! I have not tried the LAN port yet, but given how smothly everything else works, would not expect any problems with it. Having the 4 extra USB 2.0 ports is also nice; all my USB wires (phone charger, headset, scanner etc.) are now always plugged, connecting the devices on a single dock, and between the original port replicator and this one I still have couple spare USB ports left.

If I remember correctly, the CEO told me you can plug more than one Dock to your PC for the benefit of all the extra monitors -- but I have not tried it.

Overall, I am VERY pleased with this product, and now enthusiasticly evangelize it to my colleagues at work. Check it out -- you won't regret it!

57 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Plugable Universal USB 2.0 Docking Station, March 30, 2010

By 

YnotBuyit "Robert" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Plugable USB 2.0 Universal Laptop Docking Station with DisplayLink DVI/VGA up to 1920x1080, Audio, Ethernet, and 4 Available High-Speed USB 2.0 Ports (Electronics)

Installed on 2/27/2010 this review written on 3/30/2010:
PROS:
* Considering that this is unit is one of the FEW available universal docking stations that works with Windows 7 (at this time and date). Know that I never tried using the USB to video connection but everything else seems to work as advertised.
* No drivers to manually install they will auto-install with your next Windows update (the manufacturer appears to be sleeping with Microsoft).
========================
CONS:
* The unit is VERY light and after connecting a bunch of cables to it, it becomes unbalanced and tends to tip or get pushed to one side or the other. Being a bit of a metal artist I cut a spare of 1/4 steel to size and glued it to its bottom (problem resolved). I wouldn't expect them to add a weight to future models because this would triple the shipping costs.
* The motherboard is NOT mounted tight up against its plastic housing so when you insert a USB cable its sort of loose and wiggley. I would think after a year of plugging things in and out the solder joints on the internal USB connectors would fatigue. Right now its new so who am I to say what it will or will not do. At any rate its basic structure feels cheesey (seems to be a Chinese proverb these days).

Basic Rating "If you need a dock that works Windows 7 you don't have alot of other choices"

25 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Works very well albeit a tad sluggishly, May 15, 2010

By 

Garreth Biegun "-Gar" (Providence, RI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Plugable USB 2.0 Universal Laptop Docking Station with DisplayLink DVI/VGA up to 1920x1080, Audio, Ethernet, and 4 Available High-Speed USB 2.0 Ports (Electronics)

I have windows 7. All I did was plug all my devices in then plug the docking station into the wall and lastly connect it to my computer. My computer found and installed all the correct drivers and the whole thing worked right from the start. With other docking stations I read lots of reviews about how they never really worked quite right. Not so with this one. It worked from minute one. It's really nice to have two monitors and use the big monitor for most things and then just have the laptop monitor as an accessory monitor. The only real drawback to it is that sometimes mouse movement on the docked monitor can be a bit sluggish. I guess that's the drawback of have all these other items docked through a single USB port.